To be honest, it's been a while since I've put in much Simutrans time. Life happens.

Around the time I lost spare time for Simutrans, the ability to connect elevated ways to non-elevated roads at the same height was relatively new; so I hadn't gotten to play much with it. I started a strip map under pak German 64, whose graphics I adore, but there appear to be no elevated ways, and I wanted to play with them — so now I've got a pak128 map started.

I'm actually going to re-start it, because I want to create a map organically - starting with no cities or industries, and creating them in what feels like organic growth. Basically to create a map that would be ready for transport players to play on it - although I might well set up a company to have some vehicles floating around. I'll evolve the road structure through three, and possibly four, different levels: (maybe dirt roads that connect to every last little thing), Cobblestone as an early city-to-city connector, highways, then freeways.

I plan to have a couple at least metropolises that consist of a large central city with suburbs that are taken in.

But this thread is a sort of preview and introduction to all that, because on my strip map, I was working on a freeway, and I'm just so happy with the abilities that Simutrans has nowadays, I wanted to share the freeway as it runs through a city and splits into a circle around the city as well (a freeway loop - a good example would be I-220 as it loops around the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana - and attaches at both ends to I-20 - so through traffic doesn't have to deal as much with local traffic jams)

Anyway, here's some pictures:

The above is an overview of the city in question. I'd originally built the freeway that goes around the city, with its frontage roads - [size=78%]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road[/size] - as walls, then decided to make them frontage roads instead. That has to be done to protect them from the city connecting to the freeway and taking it over.

I forgot that cities would take over roads on different levels, so most of the freeway into the city was taken over - but still, it's hard to see, but I'll do this again: It's a sunken freeway, with a set of exits in the city. I used elevated roads to allow surface streets to connect to each other on top. It needs refinement, but I just love that Simutrans allows this now.

Here's one side:

I love that the signs are all aligned on slopes.

And I exist in this screenshot.

So this shows the freeway running through downtown. I think I got all the visible road tiles corrected, but the city took most of them over. There's a set of entrances/exits around city hall.

And here's the other end. A pretty compact layout, and definitely would be a lot larger before elevated roads. This is, in case it helps the eye, three levels.

And finally, showing a compact intersection between a freeway with frontage roads and a crossing road. Two versions - one compact, and one that's more visually appealing to me, but too large to use in-game (and would be taken over by city tiles anyway):

Now, the ramps (access to/from freeway) could be closer, but they're usually a bit back in the US. A better example - and the last thing before I destroy this map:

I'd still like to be able to extend the ramps a bit to make them more realistic, but at least here they *are* ramps, and properly diagonal, not curved. hehe.

Anyway, this is a mini-story to get me started on my next journey, which is to make a nice big map with lots of cities and grow it.